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EXTRUSION: AN OVERVIEW

By Dr Main Riaz Director, Food Protein R& D Center, Head - Extrusion Technology Program,
Graduate Faculty, Nutrition and Food Science Dept., Texas A&M University

xtrusion is simply an act of forcing

material through a die. High cooking
temperature, pressure, and moisture
transforms the raw material into cooked
and formed products.
There are several functions/actions
that take places during the short time.
Several types of extruders are used for
the manufacturing feed and pet foods.
Some are single screw, some are twin screw, some have internal
steam locks, some have grooved barrels, some have continuous
flighting, and others have interrupted flighting. Some extruders
generate their own heat by friction for cooking and other use
additional heat sources like stream for cooking purpose. All these
extruders work depends upon the application.
Due to the abrasive nature of feed and pet food, proper
selection of the materials of construction is important to minimize
operating costs. If screw and barrels wear too frequently, the costs
of operating an extruder may become prohibitive and ultimately
lead to shut down of the extruders.
Extruders are not new. Very short L/D (barrel length/diameter)
high shear extruders for making puffed snack foods have been
manufactured for over 70 years, single screw cooking extruders for
nearly 35 years and co-rotating twin screw extruders for 40 years.
Presently, extruder manufacturers are trying to make these extruders
more efficient and less expensive. There are approximately 25 major
extruder manufactures domestically and overseas.

Function of an Extruder:

The conditions generated by the extruder perform many

functions that allow it to be used for a wide range of food, feed
and industrial applications. Some of these functions are:
Agglomeration: Ingredients can be compacted and
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agglomerated into discrete pieces in an extruder process.

Degassing: Ingredients that contain gas pockets can be degassed
by extrusion processing.
Dehydration: During normal extrusion processing a moisture
loss of 4-5 percent can occur.
Expansion: Product density (i.e. floating and sinking) can be
controlled by extruder operation conditions and configuration.
Gelatinisation: Extrusion cooking improves starch
gelatinisation.
Grinding: Ingredients can be ground in the extruder barrel
during processing.
Homogenisation: An extruder can homogenise by restructuring
unattractive ingredients into more acceptable forms.
Mixing: A variety of screws are available which can cause the
desired amount of mixing action in the extruder barrel.
Pasteurisation and Sterilisation: Ingredients can be pasteurised
or sterilised using extrusion technology for different applications.
Protein denaturation: Animal and plant protein can be denatured
by extrusion cooking.
Shaping: An extruder can make any desired shape of product by
changing a die at the end of the extruder barrel.
Shearing: A special configuration within the extruder barrel can
create the desired shearing action for a particular product.
Texture alteration: The physical and chemical texture can be
altered in the extrusion system.
Thermal cooking: The desired cooking effect can be achieved in
the extruder.
Unitizing: Different ingredient lines can be combined into one
product to give special characteristics by using an extruder.

Advantages of Extrusion

The principal advantages of the food extrusion technology as

compared to the other food processing techniques include:

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Adaptability. An ample variety of products are feasible by
changing the minor ingredients and the operation conditions of
the extruder. Extrusion process is remarkably adaptable in being
able to accommodate the demand by consumers for new products.
Product characteristics. A variety of shapes, texture, color and
appearances can be produced, which is not easily formed using
other production method.
Energy efficient. Extruders operate at relatively low moisture
while cooking food products, so less re-drying is required.
Low cost. Extrusion has lower processing cost than other
cooking and forming processes. According to some references
we can save 19 percent raw material, 14 percent labor, and 44
percent capital investment. Extrusion processing also need less
space per unit of operation than other cooking system.
New foods. Extrusion can modify protein (vegetable and
animal), starches (almost all sources), and other food material to
produce a variety of new and unique food products.
High productivity and automated control. An extruder provides
a continuous high-throughput processing and we can have a fully
automated controls for theses extruders.
High product quality. Since extrusion is HTST heating process,
it minimises degradation of food nutrients, while improving
the digestibility of proteins (by denaturing) and starches (by
gelatinizing). Extrusion cooking at high temperature also destroy
the anti-nutritional compound, i.e. trypsin inhibitors, gossypol,
hemagglutinings, and undesirable enzymes, such as lipases,
lipoxidases and microorganisms.
No effluent. Very few process effluent are produced.

Classification of Extruders

Single-Screw Extruder: Single-screw cooking extruders

have compressive screws with decreasing channel depth
turning at high speeds to increase shear and mechanical
energy input for heating. Heating of product is induced by
the resulting friction. The barrel is jacketed for steam to
allow additional contact heating in the metering section. To
increase capacity and efficiency, it is common to preheat
ingredients in a preconditioner by adding steam before they
enter the extruder. Categories of single-screw extruders,
includes:
Cold forming (Pasta-type) extruder: deep flight, smooth barrel,
low shear speed. Little or no cooking. Used for pasta, pastry dough,
cookies, egg-rolls, ravioli, processed meat and certain candy.
High-Pressure Forming Extruder: grooved barrels to prevent
slip at the wall and greater compression in the screw design. Used
for pre-gelatinized cereal and fried snack foods.
Low-Shear Cooking Extruders: moderate shear machines with
high compression machines and grooved barrels to enhance
mixing. Soft-moist foods, and meat like snacks such as simulated
jerky.
Collet Extruders: high shear machines with grooved-barrels and
screw with multiple shallow flights. Used for puffed snacks and
expanded curls or collets.
High Shear Cooking Extruders: high shear machines, with
screws of changing flight depth, HTST devices. Make pet food,
Ready-to-Eat Cereal (RTE), candy, crisp breads, precooked
food ingredients, pre-gelatinised corn flour, dried food mixes,

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Milling and Grain - April 2016 | 51

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instant beverage powder, croutons and breading, crackers and
wafers, enzymes deactivation of full fat soy flour, imitation nuts,
famine relief feeding, texturised vegetable protein (TVP), and
deactivation of enzymes in cereal and oilseeds.
Twin-Screw Extruders: Twin screw consist of two parallel
screw in a barrel with a figure-eight cross section The use of
twin-screw extruders for food processing started in the 1970s,
with an expanding number of application in the 1980s. Twin
screw extruders are generally one and one-half times or more
expensive than single screw machine for the same capacity.
Yet the degree of quality control and processing flexibility they
offer can make them attractive to food industries. Twin screws
produce a more uniform flow of product through the barrel due
to the positive pumping action of the screw flights. Some other
advantages of twin screw are:
Handle viscous, oily, sticky or very wet material and some
other products which will slip in single screw extruder, ( It is
possible to add up to 25 percent fat in a twin screw extruder)
Less wear in smaller part of the machine than in single screw
extruder.
Wide range of particle size (from fine powder to grains) may
be used, whereas single screw is limited to a specific range of
particle size.
Because of the self-wiping characteristics cleanup is very easy.
Four type of twin-screw extruders are possible:
1. Non-intermeshed, co-rotating
2. Non-intermeshed, counter rotating
3. Intermeshed, co-rotating
4. Intermeshed, counter rotating
From these four types of twin-screw extruders, co-rotating,
intermeshed screw type has found the widest acceptance in food
and feed industry.

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1/7/16 2:11 PM

Single-screw extrusion has been successfully employed in

food and feed production over the last 75 years. Because of
consumer demands for innovative food products in the market,
extruder manufacturers adopted developed twin-screw extruders
approximately 45 years ago.
Twin-screw extruders have greater ability and flexibility for
controlling both product and process parameters. They are
a flexible design permitting easy cleaning and rapid product
changeover. Because of ability to better match the desired shear,
the twin-screw extruder has more control over product variability.
Screw speed also can be used to compensate for some variations
in the properties of the starting material. The twin-screw extruder
is a better choice for plants producing a wide variety of highvalue products at low volume because the screw speed is such an
influential variable.
Single-screw extruders are limited to 12-17 percent fat level
in the formula. Fat above that level reduces friction because
of lubrication and does not help the hardware transform
mechanical energy into heat for cooking purposes. On the other
hand, fat level in the recipe for Twin-screw extruders can be as
high as 18-22 percent and still maintain the mechanical energy.
This is only possible because of more screw configuration
options with twin-screw extruders compared to single-screw
machines.
In single-screw extruders with the help of steam injection, fat
level of the recipe can be achieved as high as 17 percent, but the
same recipes with the addition of steam in twin-screw extruders
will process more consistently, which in result has better binding
of the fat in the product and reduces the leakage of fat from the
products during handling and packaging.